NEW PAIR OF WINGS

It’s Tuesday night and we’re cozied up to HGTV watching Fixer Upper spread rustic joy all over a home in need! Mum and I have loved watching this show!  Last year we visited Waco, and we got to visit the sweet little Magnolia store, toured around the area and believe it or not have several times thought about moving to the Waco area.

As I mentioned on my earlier post we love to view properties while on vacation and we looked at about 5 or 6 while we were there in Waco. There was one house, down a pretty curving tree lined drive, that sat on a little hill overlooking a large pond, or tank as they call them in Texas, that mum thinks about as the one that got away. When we went to go inside, the real estate agent just before us had locked the laundry door, and there was no key to this lock, and no other way in, our flight left early the next day and we had to travel back to Dallas that afternoon, but the home owner couldn’t get there with the key until after their work day was over! We figured it just wasn’t meant to be that time.

Anyway, we really are fans of the style although mum is a little less rustic, then I am. I guess you could say, I’m a little bit country and she’s a little bit Barbara Streisand. Haha!

We would love to do shiplap,  but with our health and age issues, I’m in my 50’s and I have Valley Fever, and mum is in her 70’s, so we have some strength and energy limitations.  This DIY is so easy that I think anyone could do it. And if you do have some of the same limits that we have, or even just time and attention limits, just remember that you don’t have to do everything all at once. Most of the time my projects get done in 10 and 20 minute energy spurts, with rests in between. My projects might take a lititle longer to complete, but they eventually get finished, and then I’m not so worn out I can’t function later.

Starting at the beginning of the idea: Have I mentioned that I love to troll Amazon?  There’s so much they have available, from pencils to garages, they make it so easy. Almost anything I could think of can all be found and delivered to your front door from Amazon.com. A few months ago I was searching for woodgrain wallpaper on Amazon and I found photographers background paper in 4×12 foot sheets in several different styles from less then $9. Since then, I’ve been thinking up how and if I could really use it. The review pictures were amazing for photos, and the reviews noted it was just paper, so it tore when people walked on it, but it was just backdrop paper afterall, so how could I use it?

Maybe create a wall treatment? I didn’t think I’d want to glue it on, it might never come off again. But I decided that I might try thumb tacks to attach it to the wall and then put trim over the edges, which I would have done with wallpaper anyway. And if it didn’t work, for less then the price of a delivery pizza, I could have 24 linear feet delivered straight to my door to experiment with!

I placed my order and two days later the rolls arrived. I the meantime, feeling overwhelmed by stuff and knowing I’ve been spending too much lately I put myself on a spending freeze.   So I’m hunting through our trim remnants and we don’t have enough of any one trim to finish both walls in our family room. Eeeek! Innovation challenge time! What am I gonna use to trim it without spending any money?? I’m turning over old doors and searching the garage corners, and I step out the side door and there’s a stack of salvaged fence boards from last year’s fence rebuild! Yayyy! I’ve found my trim and with some cleaning and dry brushed white paint I start thinking that it could look very beach cottage.

Sounds easy right?! It was! It was SO easy! We just went with the 4′ height the paper came as and trimmed the length with our razor knife.  Next we removed the electric plates first. Thumb tacked the paper in the far corner and then along the top and bottom smoothing it and the bubbles out as we went.  We gently felt though the paper, found where the electrical outlets were, and used a razor knife to carefully cut out the paper around them.

Then we cleaned and trimmed the old fence boards down to fresh ends with our mitre saw.  We found the walls studs, and leveled and screwed the first two upper boards on.  We then measured and made the cuts for the side boards and the short piece that finished the top trim. Once the boards were up, I just dry brushed a single coat of left over Benjamin Moore Simply White paint and all that was left was waiting for the paint to dry and putting the electrical covers back on.

We now have a beautiful rustic wood feel for our family room and we spent less then $9 and it only took parts of two afternoons for us to finish.

I think this is a two person job only because it’s just paper and lifting the roll up over the floor trim for the first thumb tacks without tearing it and holding the boards level for screwing in, is a whole lot easier and more fun with a friend. I also think that if your boards were all cleaned and ready to go, it would just take one afternoon to complete.

Tools required: pencil, white thumb tacks, 2 inch screws, measuring tape, razor knife or scissors, level, mitre saw and drill. You could also use nails and a hammer instead of the screws and drill.